Go read Gordon Campbell
Yesterday the ‘sphere was all a-twitter with reaction to John Armstrong’s rant at “parasitical bloggers”. On this and many other topics, do yourself a favour, go read Gordon Campbell.
Media
blogs
My 2 cents
It must be pretty sweet when your full-time job is to write 4 500-word columns of opinion a week. It’s even sweeter when you can use those 500 words to have a whinge at your critics rather than write about things that your audience, you know, gives a crap about. The weird thing about Armstrong’s article is it first attempts to refute the critics and then provides excuses. But, in truth, it’s a personal tirade. And the place for that isn’t a national newspaper column: it’s a blog.
Messenger shoot-out
It must be the Herald’s new tabloid format. Or perhaps Steven Joyce talking about the death of print news. On Friday John Drinnan highlighted APN-internal media spats speaking of “Frenemies”; today John Armstrong launches forth at so-called bloggers Gordan Campbell and Bryce Edwards. Citizen journalism and the web are undoubtedly offering a challenge to the old hands. Some are coping better than others.
Evolving online media in NZ
NZ is well served in the range of online offerings that are exploring beyond the fringes of the mainstream media. Welcome to a new player, Bernard Hickey’s JOURNALISM.ORG.NZ.
CV replies to Whaleoil
Guest poster Colonial Viper replies to some typically loopy accusations from Whaleoil.
Frankly Speaking: “John Banks: condition deteriorating”
Frank Macskasy over at Frankly Speaking writes some very long posts that are often full of interesting information. This one does a good analysis of the recommendations from the Electoral Commission and various party positions on it. On the way through he has a good swipe at John Banks, who it would be safe to say, he considers to be political cabbage.
The wrong conversation
There has been a lot of discussion on the direction Labour is heading and the direction it should go. There have been some […]
Sunday Reading
I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: the bread & butter line, bankers, racism and the corporate speak of John Key.
Kiwiblog: media getting savvy?
The media have generally just regurgitated David Farrar’s angled statistics, stories and lines. Now we finally see a story that looks behind: this is a blog from one of the National Party elite, so why is he running a story on Police pay? Are National looking to move on this?
ImperatorFish: Love, People, Love!
Scott exhorts us all to just get along. If we could just love each other and the Dear Leader, wouldn’t things be better?
All the news that’s fit to print – Rupert & Gina’s way
Major changes in the media in Oz will have their impact here – some already have. Interesting times ahead for all, including the Standard.
The smell of corruption
The Jackal raised the issue of corruption in relation to John Banks in a comment here and has written more about it on his blog. It appears on the evidence of DotCom’s lieutenant that when he was a Member of Parliament Banks was offering to accept a financial consideration in respect of any act to be done by him in his capacity as a member of Parliament. This makes Philip Field look like a Good Samaritan. Banks has to go.
New political blog
Welcome to the twistedhive. A new political blog in the NZ ‘sphere.
Some interesting posts including some insightful commentary on the choices for Labour’s chief of staff and one about getting around the government’s plan to veto paid parental leave.
400,000 comments (almost)
By one standard we have now passed 400 thousand comments. But I’m not a bullshitter with numbers like Bill English or Whaleoil. By my standards, we haven’t quite hit it yet. We will in a couple of weeks. I’m starting to get a bit worried about how we’re going to handle the rapidly increasing rate that people are arguing with each other here…
Come back, we were just measuring GDP wrong!
100 jobs a day were lost in January and 1000 people a week left New Zealand for Australia last year but it turns out it was all a mistake! David Farrar has discovered that we measure GDP slightly differently from Australia and if we use their measure then the purchasing power parity-adjusted difference in GDP per capita is close to zero. Hooray!
Tales from Christchurch
As a followup to the “big media” coverage of Christchurch yesterday, there are plenty of people posting on their experiences of life in the quake-ridden city. One that I follow is the blog of award winning Kiwi author Helen Lowe.
ImperatorFish: Shock As Labour Discovers David Farrar Is Not The PM
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Labour Party MPs are said to be red-faced, after discovering that prominent blogger David Farrar is not the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Shut it down
The same day as we learn that Labour won’t be allowing press gallery journos free access to their wing of Parliament as previously (apparently a desperate attempt at message control by keeping off message MPs and journos apart: someone better tell Fran Mold what a cellphone is), Labour’s bizarre cult of David Farrar has performed its first human sacrifice.
Comment Privacy and fools
Cameron Slater is a technological idiot. Well he has just proven it again. A comment on our site referred to IP/e-mail matching at another site. In his own guilt about privacy abuses Slater immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion.
I’d advise people to never put comments on sites that lack a privacy policy that is explicit about what information may be used for. But we ensure your privacy here.
ImperatorFish: Phil and Carmel’s Greatest Hits
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
Holding the blogosphere to account: how did dpf, Trotter and WhaleOil do on their predictions for Phil Twyford and Carmel Sepuloni after Carmel won the Waitakere nomination…
ImperatorFish: Not Irony #2
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
David Farrar is running National’s line that anything the teachers don’t want must be good for the education of our children…
ImperatorFish: Not Irony #1
Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here
David Farrar applies some wonky logic in order to blame everything bad the Nats do on the left. If any group of voters is to blame for the National/ACT deal, it’s those voters who gave National their party vote and/or John Banks their electorate vote.
Rugby World Cup cramps politics
One of the more interesting observations about this election campaign has been the effect of having the rugby world cup on the political process and therefore on our political blog stats. They were really crammed into the last two months and disrupted by big games.
“Blog king” no more
Well we have just moved out of the election month, and we’re now getting the gradual fall back of readership and posts. About the only growth around NZ at present is in political blogging.
I’m happy to say that we now appear to consistently be either level pegging with Kiwiblog or exceeding their totals for a number of months. Since we have been ‘advised’ many times that this would never happen, I’m finding that it is rather more satisfying than I expected.
Parker withdrawing
David Parker has withdrawn from the leadership race of the Labour party according to Stuff. Predictably Kiwiblog, Stuff, and probably the other right-wing […]
Victim tales of the right
Nationals yapping poodles here were doing it during the election by calling Labour “nasty” in violation of any level of common sense. John Key and teabags. In the US similar supporters are calling Obama nasty for pointing out a lying political ad by Mitt Romney.
Don’t ya know the right are always the poor victims… I just tend to find them to be whining dickheads. But I am actually trying to be nasty.
Taking out the trash
Michael Laws has been calling for listeners to shoot journalists. He’s a disturbed individual who should never be on the air again. Wouldn’t be nice to take the trash out of political commentary?
Penguin: Key lies to help us
Yes, that’s an actual quote [sans ‘serfs’] from David Farrar lying about his master John Key’s lies about not raising GST.
hattip: frank macskasy
DPF – deliberately missing the point
DPF is stirring the sewer again with ridiculous smears about a Labour candidate. Does he resort to mud-flinging due to a lack of National policy that stacks up?
Not PC on John Key’s lies
Trenchant criticism of the beleaguered PM today from an unusual source. Well worth clicking through to read the whole post, here’s the main points…
Let the courts decide
The threat of invoking defamation is a standard tactic to intimidate those who can’t afford the legals bills to shut their mouths. Such […]
The right’s weird obsession with Darien Fenton
Darien Fenton makes a mean comment about a celebrity butcher on facebook and then apologises for it and offers to shout him a drink to make up for it.
No big deal? Well according to some hysterical righties that makes Fenton worse than Hitler.
Diverse hypocrites
National is the party of middle aged white guys, but according to their chief spinster we shouldn’t care…
Farrar: Ironically being political and shallow
Reading the political spin from David Farrar (channeling Bill English) over the weekend, I have to keep reminding myself that he really has very little idea about the practicalities of business. Where he is concerned about political costs, I find from a perspective of an exporter that I’m far more concerned about reliability of services.
Worlds apart
Spotted in an English pub. Check out the artist’s name.
The new political battleground
Rijab looks at how social media can be a useful tool for political parties but how it also needs to be used carefully, lest it come back to hurt you. Red Alert and Frogblog are very free, with MPs writing what they want and relatively loose moderation, whereas NationalMPs is insipid and tightly controlled – who has taken the smarter course?